Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | asian american
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January 1, 2008

I've been drinking something that tastes like dirt. I've also been drinking something else that tastes like weeds. Both are supposed to be good for me. It's an Asian thing -- there's a cultural fascination in with potions and powders and pills outside of "Western" medicine and healthcare. I don't doubt that a lot of Eastern alternatives work, and not just acupuncture. Some of it is that foreign countries simply have different medicines. I grew up taking Japanese pills called "Ru-Ru" (more or less pronounced that way) because my mom used it for everything from headaches to colds and fevers and just plain old feeling icky. She still buys bottles of it when she goes back to Japan. The pharmacist at her hometown drugstore recognizes her everytime she returns to stock up on Ru-Ru and other Japanese drugs. Beyond pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of other health products marketed to Asians that might make non-Asians scratch their heads. Or just laugh. For instance, there's a popular tea called "Diet Tea" that shows up in Asian grocery stores. We've tried it, and it helps people "diet" by serving as a powerful laxative. You'll lose weight, all right. But it won't be from managing what you eat. Along these lines, I've been drinking up powders that were given to me: Aojiru and Ginseng Tea.
December 1, 2007

Glico caramels

In the U.S., snack food manufacturers in recent years have become creative, and come up with a variety of flavor combinations beyond the old barbecue-flavor potato chips or the nacho cheese flavored Doritos. Now you can get black pepper and olive oil Triscuits, or chili-lime flavored corn chips. But American palates probably aren't ready for some of the flavors that are available in Japan.

November 18, 2007


Members of the Grateful Crane Ensemble's "Moonlight Serenaders" in "The Camp Dance: The Music & The Memories," include (front row) Keiko Kawashima and Jason Fong; (back row) Kurt Kuniyoshi, Darrell Kunitomi and Haruye Ioka. (Photo by Phil Nee)
You wouldn't think that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II would make for great source material for a stage musical. But it does, and in a way, makes a much more effective vehicle to tell people about that time, and what happened to JA families, than heavier, dramatic works such as the novel and movie, "Snow Falling on Cedars." "The Camp Dance: The Music & the Memories" is proof that internment can be explained in an entertaining way through a musical. Written and produced by Soji Kashiwagi, a sansei, and performed by his Grateful Crane Ensemble of actors, the play combines narration (the actors announcing what's going on on the stage), acting (there's plenty of terrific, believable and historically accurate dialogue), music and dance to entertain and educate audiences about the internment experience.

November 18, 2007

Bill Hosokawa in 2005, sitting next to a caricature at the Denver Press Club
Bill Hosokawa died of natural causes at age 92 in Sequim, Washington, where he lived with his daughter. He was a pioneering Japanese American journalist, author and diplomat who lived in Denver for 60 years. Those are the facts of Bill's life and death. But there's lots more to Bill than just the facts. I wrote an obituary for Bill that will run in the Pacific Citizen, the newspaper of the Japanese American Citizens League, the APA civil rights organization. Bill was a leader within the JACL, and a columnist for the PC for decades. I'm the editorial board chair for the newspaper, and a national board member of JACL, and I knew Bill because we'd run into each other at many events in Denver. So it made sense for me to write the obit for the PC. But I also owed it to Bill to write about him because he was a role model for me as a writer -- we both wrote columns for Denver's Japanese community newspaper (he kept his up long after I ran out of juice and got too busy). I wrote about Bill's influence on my career years ago, in one of my columns.

October 14, 2007

We ended the week with a flurry of shopping at the famous Flea Market at Aloha Stadium.
Sat. Sept. 22 It's our last day in Honolulu, but we're now slowing down. It's jam-packed, with a trip to the fabled Flea Market that Erin has been raving about since we've been planning the trip. It's a sale that's held every Wednesday and Saturday at Aloha Stadium near the airport, and it's truly a treasure trove of inexpensive omiyage – gifts to take back to the mainland. There are vendors with t-shirts as cheap as eight for $20; ties for $5; aloha shirts for under $10. It's a shopper's delight, and a negotiator's training ground. Everyone haggles for a better price. In my case, I was proud to have talked a woman down on her Hawaiian print ties, only to find a vendor a few booths down who had them even cheaper. C'est la vie.

October 14, 2007

We didn't see many geckoes during our visit, but here's one tiny one we saw next to a sculpture of a gecko, outside Richela's front door.
Friday, Sept. 21 Another big food day. We're eating our way across Oahu. It was also a day of hunting history. We began the day with Richela, who joined us in a drive downtown to the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i. It's a very nice facility in a nice building, with a museum, gift shop and research library dedicated to the history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

September 30, 2007

Tamashiro Market, a jam packed shop on a busy street corner. Bill took us there for corn flake cookies, which were, as promised, fantastic.
Thursday, Sept. 20 This was a food and friendship day. We got up and had a leisurely morning, hanging around Richela's condo. Then Erin and I drove past downtown to meet up with Bill Rose, one of the more intriguing people I know. So let me tell you about Bill Rose.

September 27, 2007

One of the beaches Richela drove us to along the eastern shore of Oahu.
Wednesday, Sept. 19 It was sad leaving Laura and John's in Mililani – it's a beautiful and comfortable home, and they were so gracious and generous, it felt like we've known them all our lives. At the same time, we were looking forward to seeing Erin's friend Richela, who we knew from the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival. She's half Japanese, half Chinese, and she volunteered and helped Erin with the festival's performing arts stage. She moved from Denver to Honolulu several years ago; she's a native of Hawaii who lived in Colorado for over two decades. She now lives in a condo along the marina in an area west of downtown Honolulu called Hawaii Kai, with two cats, Sporty (who looks like a mature, heavier version of our black-and-white, Rufus) and a handsome gray and tan cat named Tokyo. We reserved the day for sightseeing, nothing else. No shopping (!), no family research. Of course, eating was allowed.